Boomerang Behaviour and Emerging Adulthood: Moving Back to the Parental Home and the Parental Neighbourhood in Sweden

Jenny Olofsson,Gunnar Malmberg,Allan Findlay,Erika Sandow

doi:10.1007/s10680-020-09557-x

Jenny Olofsson, Gunnar Malmberg + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-020-09557-x

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Abstract

This paper makes two original contributions to research on young adults’ boomerang mobility. First, it reveals the magnitude and complexity of return moves by young people to their parental home and neighbourhood. Secondly, it shows that the determinants and associates of return migration vary significantly when analysed at two different geographical scales—the parental home and the parental neighbourhood area. Using longitudinal data (1986–2009) on four cohorts of young adults, we find that boomeranging to the parental home in Sweden has increased in times of economic recession and is associated with economic vulnerability, such as leaving higher education or entering unemployment, and partnership dissolution. While returning to the parental home can offer financial support in times of life course reversal, we found gender differences indicating a greater independence among young women than men. Returning to the parental neighbourhood is found to be a very different kind of mobility than returning to co-reside with one’s parents, involving the migration decisions of more economically independent young adults. Results also indicate that returns to the parental neighbourhood, as well as returns to the parental home, can be part of young people’s life course changes.

Highlights

Returning to the parental home is a significant mobility behaviour among young adults, and in the growing literature on this topic it has been claimed to be on the increase (Arundel and Ronald 2016; South and Lei 2015; Stone et al 2014)
The starting point of this paper was the suggestion that an increasing share of young adults in contemporary Western societies engage in boomerang mobility
Our aim is to chart the conceptual advance offered by our Swedish analysis. This is achieved through a theorisation of the distinctiveness of return moves to the parental neighbourhood compared with those to the parental home

Summary

Introduction

Returning to the parental home is a significant mobility behaviour among young adults, and in the growing literature on this topic it has been claimed to be on the increase (Arundel and Ronald 2016; South and Lei 2015; Stone et al 2014). The conceptual significance of return mobility is threefold It matters to those studying housing markets and so-called housing careers (Arundel and Ronald 2016). It is important to demographers interested in the transition to adulthood and changing patterns of household composition and family ties (Billari and Liefbroer 2010). It matters to researchers interested in the relationship between life courses and residential mobility trajectories (Coulter et al 2016; Mulder and Wagner 2010; Davanzo and Goldscheider 1990). While moving back to the parental home is seen as a reversal of the young adults’ housing career and a sign of their dependency on their parents, it is less clear to what extent returnees to the parental neighbourhood are in different or similar life situations

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